CAREER DEVELOPMENT CORE ABSTRACT The mission of the Career Development Core is to support faculty, particularly early stage investigators and under-represented minority investigators, to enable them to reach their goals of achieving and maintaining excellence in scientific research. A strong Career Development Core focused on early stage and under- represented minority faculty investigators will be developed. This Core will produce a career development plan that provides the support required to ensure that Center for Human Health and the Environment (CHHE) members compete successfully for external funding with emphasis on early stage investigators and under- represented minority faculty investigators and fosters ongoing refinement of skills. The Career Development Core will be coordinated with a robust Pilot Project Program to foster early stage investigators and also serve as a mechanism to recruit new early stage faculty scientists to environmental health science research. Our innovative Seed Project Program will also be used to build on an existing collaboration with North Carolina Central University (NCCU), a Historically Black College in Durham, NC, to create a pipeline to train, retool, and collaborate with under-represented minority faculty investigators who have interests in environmental health science. The Career Development Core will also coordinate monthly Center enrichment activities, including seminars by distinguished investigators and the Annual Retreat.